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Sunday, October 13, 2013

Sexism and Feminism in Geekery 10

As far as I'm concerned, sexism has been put on notice for this week. Honestly there was way too much to include. I've left out at least three incidents (which I hope to include next week) because sexism just exploded the past couple of weeks.

David Gilmour Does Not Like Women Writers

Congrats David Gilmour! You are the sexist asshat of the week. The whole internet exploded in one giant WTF over your terrible comments about how you don't teach women writers.

I’m not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women. Except for Virginia Woolf. And when I tried to teach Virginia Woolf, she’s too sophisticated, even for a third-year class. Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren’t any women writers in the course. I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.

You legit cannot make this stuff up. Readin the full original article here or the full transcript. You can also read his apology where he admits that the only reason he's apologizing is that his publisher is worried women might not buy his book. But guys I'm sure he's genuinely sorry. And he teaches Truman Capote so he can't be anti-anything (that's in the Bible or something I swear)

Probably my favorite response came from a professor at the University of Toronto. Read it here.

Tumblr Takes on Sexism in Axe Astronaut Contest

Tumblr, I love thee. Especially when you do stuff like this. When Roshini Muniam Rose was announced as one of the five finalists from Malaysia, she faced the almost-expected sexist comments of the internet. But then something magical happened.

Last night, Tumblr user sisterofdusk decided to take Rose’s fight to the people. Posting to the Malaysian feminist Tumblr group keluargakilljoy, she asked, “I’ve cast my vote, what are you waiting for? Let’s send her to space!” Rose got a big boost when Tumblr and YouTube celeb Tyler Oakley reblogged the post, noting, “She’s losing by 20k votes. Let’s fix this.” And Tumblr did. In less than 24 hours, Tumblr reblogged sisterofdusk’s post more than 38,000 times, pushing her from less than 3,000 votes to nearly 39,000.

Read the full article here. My favorite part about this story is that it actually worked and Roshini will go on to compete at space camp in Orlando.

Sexualization of Suicide - Comic WTF

Yes this is a few weeks late but it feels way too significant not to include.

Let’s recap this—in order to get potentially hired by DC Comics as an artist, all you have to do is draw a picture of a female character (who has already recently gone through an unnecessary hyper-sexualized redesign) completely naked and about to commit suicide.